


Speech on Novus

by Yukito



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yukito/pseuds/Yukito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven Young's speech as delivered by him on the day of an opening of a new facility for the people of Novus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speech on Novus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cirque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/gifts).



Let me tell you about my mother.

My mother was a strong woman. I know that everyone likes to say that about their mother when looking back, but I can honestly say that my mother was the strongest person I know. Even before the Founders arrived here on Novus and started a life here for themselves, she was strong. 

Now we’ve all heard the stories about the great ship the Founders used to travel in. How they barely had food or water and they were lost in space. Well my mother was given the task of the healer. Back then they called her a ‘medic’ and she was the one who was supposed to save everyone else. Save everyone else on a dying ship floating through space. Now many of us who were given a similar challenge might want to hand it off to someone else. Lord knows that I wouldn’t have wanted that assignment. But my mother took up the mantle as healer of everyone and she worked hard at being good at it.

I can’t pretend to be able to imagine what it was like for them on that ship. I know many of us have heard our parents talk about it, but I do know what I remember of my mother when she was still alive and here on Novus. She was giving, thoughtful, and self-sacrificing. Even when she got sick, she tried to hide it from my sister and I so that we wouldn’t worry. And when it came time to tell us, when she couldn’t hide it anymore from us, she told us with the bravest face imaginable. I can still remember the look she had on her face as she told us about her illness and what would happen. I didn’t really understand it all, but I knew that things would be okay because if my mother could be strong even as the illness ravaged her body, that I could be strong, too.

Which is why I feel great pride and honour today as we dedicate this new house of medicine in my mother’s name. The Tamara Johansen Center for Healing stands for everything my mother stood for. It is a place where we will fight to be strong and to stay strong. Where we will shoulder any illness that may befall our loved ones with dignity and determination and where many of us will have many more children to teach the lesson that we have learned from the Founders.

Thank you.

Steven Young


End file.
